604 PREHISTORIC VILLAGES IN TENNESSEE (ETH. ANN. 41 
floor. It contained the body of a child about 4 years old. (U.S. 
National Museum, Division of Physical Anthropology, No. 316088.) 
The body had been buried in the flesh, extended full length, on its 
back, arms at side, head at west end of grave. 
The two bone dice shown in Plate 137, a, were found buried with 
this child. One was at the child’s right ankle, the other at its right 
knee. These dice were both made from the astragalus bone of a 
Virginia deer. As will be seen from the illustration, these bones had 
been carefully worked down, apparently by rubbing, until they had 
somewhat rectangular faces. It will also be observed that each face 
is different, and, like our modern dotted-face dice, each face probably 
had a different counting value. 
Astragalus bones of the deer, sheep, bison, and many other animals 
have been used by savage man as dice from the earliest times, in 
every quarter of the globe. The early Greeks and Romans so used 
them. In the Corcoran Art Gallery, in Washington, there is a 
plaster cast of ‘‘The Bone Player,” catalogue number 1045, the 
original of which is in the Louvre. It represents a young maiden 
playing with four deer astragalus dice, and was unearthed in Rome 
in 1730. Modern incised dotted dice are descended from the ancient 
astragalus dice. Astragalus bones were used as dice by many of our 
Indian tribes. Such dice have been found in many of the stone-slab 
graves in the region around the Fewkes group, and also in Kentucky, 
Arkansas, Mississippi, and elsewhere. They have been found in the 
graves of adults as well as of children. The dice from these graves 
show that both the young and the old of the middle Tennessee stone- 
grave people played with them. 
At the right of the child’s neck was the miniature pot shown in 
Plate 137,a. This small pot measured only 114 inches in diameter. 
It was inverted, which proves it was not intended to contain food or 
drink. 
GRAVE B 
The stone-slab grave B was 125 feet north of grave A. It was so 
near the surface that the top had been removed and the bones broken 
by the plow. It contained the badly decayed bones of an adult 
male (U. S. National Museum, Division of Physical Anthropology, 
No. 316098), lying on its back, extended full length, arms at sides. 
The skull shows signs of occipital compression. The coffin was 5 feet 
6 inches in length and 14 inches in width. The bottom was lined with 
thin stone slabs. The grave ran W. 5° N., and no ornaments or 
artifacts of any kind were found in it. 
38 Consult Stewart Culin’s ‘‘ Games of the North American Indians,’ Twenty-fourth Ann. Rept. Bur. 
Amer. Ethn., 1907. 
